An African actor was attacked at a bar in Mósteles, Spain, over the weekend in an incident that the Spanish Immigration and Refugee Support Network has reported as a hate crime.
According to El País, Marius Makon said that the incident occurred around 7 a.m., when the actor went up to a counter with his friends to order a coffee at the Madrid-region establishment. It was then that a woman said to him, “I don’t want black people in this place or in front of me.”
Makon, who posted about his encounter on Facebook, said that he responded to the woman, saying, “No Miss, I will only be here for a moment and then I’m leaving. I don’t have any interest in staying near you for long.”
That was when the woman escalated her verbal attack.
“I don’t care, you black piece of shit, get out of here,” she allegedly responded.
When Makon urged her to calm down, she again verbally assaulted him.
“Black piece of shit. I’m white. I can kill you and nothing will happen,” she responded.
It was at this point that she took a beer bottle and smashed it across Makon’s head, injuring him very near his eye.
People who were at the establishment came to the actor’s aid, and the owners called the police. However, it seems that the woman had a pretty good hold on the justice system, as she was detained but was released once her statement was taken by police, according to El País.
Makon acknowledged this grim truth in his post.
“The truth is, nothing has happened to her,” he explained. “After being identified, she has gone home, while I have gone to mine with 7 stitches. Now the problem is in the hands of the law. The law will decide on the sentence.”
The Spanish Immigration and Refugee Support Network called for an “immediate” sentence and is pushing for the Mósteles Town Hall as well as the Madrid regional government to “show their condemnation for what happened.”
“We will not stop until these types of backward, intolerable and feudal-era assaults are stopped,” the organization said in a statement on Facebook.